It’s nice to know that childhood favorite, 1988’s “Bloodsport” hasn’t aged too much since its initial release. As an artifact of the beginning of Belgium martial arts star Jean Claude Van Damme’s box office reign in the nineties, it’s a fun bit of nostalgia. As an action movie in its own right, it’s a fun thriller and martial arts film that takes a bit from “Enter the Dragon” and feels like what should have been the template for a “Street Fighter” movie. Van Damme plays US Soldier Frank Dux (just go with it), an officer who goes AWOL in order to travel to Hong Kong. After training extensively, he enters a top secret martial arts tournament known as Kumite. Kept hush hush by most of the fighters that enter it, Kumite is a very violent sport that can occasionally end in death.
Tag Archives: Martial Arts
Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016)
Hey, if Sylvester Stallone can get “Creed” why can’t Jean Claude Van Damme get his own go around? “Kickboxer: Vengeance” is a remake/reboot of the “Kickboxer” series where we’re given essentially the same narrative as the original Van Damme action film, except with a few roles switched here and there. As a bid of respect, Van Damme returns to the series playing the enigmatic Master Durand, a martial arts trainer who manages to train hero Kurt for his fight to avenge his fallen brother. Van Damme’s performance is top notch in “Vengeance” and he manages to get some prime action scenes in the film, including one involving an ambush in his temple by a lone fighter.
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray/Digital]
DC and Warner beat Marvel to the punch by comprising a superhero team made up of some of the most popular bit players from the DC television-verse, ending in a pretty mixed result. Season one of “Legends of Tomorrow” is a scattered and pretty crazy series of episodes that finds a rag tag group of DC’s heroes and villains coming together to stop the evil Vandal Savage. Along with the confusing time paradoxes, the writers and producers seem to be scrambling to also keep up with their long list of team members, conflicts, sub-plots and the like resulting in only a mediocre start from out of the gate. What happens when people like The Flash and Arrow are busy with their own enemies?
Red Sonja: Queen of Plagues [Blu-Ray/DVD]
Your enjoyment of “Queen of Plagues” will depend on your love for motion comic books. Shout Factory has shown a love for the format of motion comics in the past, and they continue that trend with adapting Gail Simone’s miniseries from Dynamite! Despite the draw back of animating certain panels that just look awkward in motion, “Queen of Plagues” is an engrossing adventure where we meet Sonja once again in battle. After the noble King Dimath raids and conquers a kingdom in a bloody battle, he enters a dungeon and decides to free the two remaining prisoners and let them go without trial. One of them is Sonja.
Brix and the Bitch (2016)
Director and Writer Nico Raineau’s award winning “Brix and the Bitch” is a remarkable drama about the powerful love two women share, and how it can potentially decide their future when one of them is stuck in a terrible situation. Dre Swain is fantastic as Bitch, a martial artist who engages in a near endless string of fights for an illegal gambling circuit. Despite her girlfriend Brix’s insistence that she stop before she’s killed, Bitch engages in bone shattering fights every night.
Red Sonja (1985)
I’m not ashamed to admit that “Red Sonja” is a childhood favorite. As a TV junkie, I spent a lot of my childhood watching movies on network TV and I constantly tuned in to “Red Sonja.” It was such a departure from the normal movies I watched as it sported a female heroine, Ernie Reyes Jr. trying his best to kick ass, and an unusual narrative that feels like a mix of “Barbarella” and “Wizard of Oz.” Of course this being 1985, you can sense Dino DiLaurentiis also trying to build his own movie series a la “Star Wars,” even featuring a battle with an underwater monster in a cave. I never caught on to it before, but this is also one of the rare action movies from the eighties where there is a heavily implied sexual affair between heroine Sonja and villainous Queen Gedren.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Viola Davis plays a big muckety-muck named Amanda Waller who works for the government. Much like Bruce Wayne, she saw a lot of the carnage inflicted by Superman and Zod in “Man of Steel,” and now that he’s dead, she wants to ensure there’s never another Superman coming to Earth to cause chaos. So naturally, she goes to Belle Reeve prison to assemble a team of super villains, all of whom have already had their asses handed to them by Batman and The Flash. Her reasoning is that the best way to defeat another potential alien menace is by enlisting a group of super villains on a suicide mission including a man crocodile, boomerang throwing maniac, and a Joker fan girl with an obsession with bats and mallets.